Project Description

Inviqa

Cloud Phone System

The Customer

With offices across the UK and Europe, Inviqa is a company that helps organisations to fulfil their digital ambitions with consultancy and software development services and is behind some of the digital successes of Comic Relief, the BBC, and FTSE-listed companies such as PZ Cussons.

When first setting up in the UK, Inviqa was supported by a facilities management business that arranged its Internet and phone services.

The Challenge

“It was a Voice over IP phone system that unfortunately had several unanticipated limitations and failings,” explains Mahdi Hastie who is responsible for Inviqa’s Sysadmin & Desktop Support. “For example, we couldn’t transfer calls between our employees, there was no conferencing facility and calls would randomly drop off – it was unreliable.”

At the time the company had around 20 employees using the phone system and because of the technical issues and lack of features, staff would instead revert to using their mobile phones. “This wasn’t acceptable,” comments Mahdi. “Not only was it a more expensive way to operate, because mobile calling costs are comparatively high, expense claims needed to be calculated and processed which took up valuable staff and company time.”

In December 2014 the company decided that it needed a better alternative and began the search for a modern phone system that would offer reliability as well as phone features the company needed.

“We began with a Google search, and that served up a number of potential suppliers, including Foehn,” says Mahdi. “As we operate in the sysadmin community we were also able to reach out to see if anyone had any good or bad experiences of cloud phone system providers.”

At the same time the company drew up a specification for a new phone system based on its existing and future business needs.

The Solution

“Once we knew what we needed, we then spent three months talking to and assessing several companies, looking at their pricing and getting a feel for their technical strengths and capabilities, including demos. Eventually we decided on Foehn because all we could see were the positives and it was clear they could provide the type of reliable system that we need at a good price and one with all the features in our specification.”

“They also understood that we wanted to retain some elements of our old phone system. One of the other suppliers we approached said it wouldn’t be possible to do this and we would have to replace all of the handsets at a cost of over £5,000. Foehn took a far more pragmatic approach and said that a new phone system supplied by them could be adapted to accommodate the old handsets so we could retain some of our previous investment.”

Having decided to go with Foehn, Inviqa gave the thumbs up and within six weeks the company had in place a new 40 seat multi-site cloud phone system that was both reliable and provided the features that its growing team needed.

Commenting on the benefits of the new system to Inviqa, Mahdi says: “Our phone system now works across all sites, so we can easily transfer calls both within and across offices. We can make calls internally by dialing just four digits. And our staff can also receive an audiofile in their inbox with a voice call they may have missed. We now have the features that enable us to run our business professionally

For Mahdi too, it’s also been an “immeasurable time saver”. “Previously I would have been called away from other work to sort things out and that has now all but disappeared,” he explains.

“It’s early days for CRM integration, but our plan is to reshape how our sales and marketing teams work and our phone system will become an integral part of the new integrated approach. Right now, we have a reliable phone system supplied and supported by a well respected and highly responsive team of experts at Foehn.”